THE MYSTERY OF
Edwin Drood

(1870, 1912 ed.)

edited by J. Cuming Walters
with additional text from the manuscript
as noted by W. Robertson Nicoll

The second instalment, originally released 1870-may

A Gaslight note: ** indicates passages deleted by Dickens but
restored by his executor before publication;
// indicates text deleted or replaced by Dickens;
++ indicates text added by Dickens during revisions before
publication.

Index to the chapters

THE Reverend Septimus Crisparkle (Septimus, because six
little brother Crisparkles before him went out, one by one,
as they were born, like six weak little rushlights, as they
were lighted), having broken the thin morning ice near
Cloisterham Weir with his amiable head, much to the
invigoration of his frame, was now assisting his circulation
by boxing at a looking-glass with great science and prowess.
A fresh and healthy portrait the looking-glass presented of
the Reverend Septimus, feinting and dodging with the utmost
artfulness, and hitting out from the shoulder with the
utmost straightness, while his radiant features teemed with
innocence, and soft-hearted benevolence beamed from his
boxing-gloves.

It was scarcely breakfast-time yet, for Mrs.
Crisparkle --- mother, not wife of the Reverend Septimus ---
was only just down, and waiting for the urn. Indeed, the
Reverend Septimus left off at this very moment to take the
pretty old lady's entering face between his boxing-gloves
and kiss it. Having done so with tenderness, the Reverend
Septimus turned to again, countering with his left, and
putting in his right, in a tremendous manner.

"I say, every morning of my life, that
you'll do it at last, Sept," remarked the old lady,
looking on; "and so you will."

"Do what, Ma dear?"

"Break the pier-glass, or burst a
blood-vessel."

"Neither, please God, Ma dear. Here's
wind, Ma. Look at this!"

In a concluding round of great severity, the
Reverend Septimus administered and escaped all sorts of
punishment, and wound up by getting the old lady's cap into
Chancery --- such is the technical term used in scientific
circles by the learned in the Noble Art --- with a lightness
of touch that hardly stirred the lightest lavender or cherry
riband on it. Magnanimously releasing the defeated, just in
time to get his gloves into a drawer and feign to be looking
out of window in a contemplative state of mind when a
servant entered, the Reverend Septimus then gave place to
the urn and other preparations for breakfast. These
completed, and the two alone again, it was pleasant to see
(or would have been, if there had been any one to see it,
which there never was), the old lady standing to say the
Lord's Prayer aloud, and her son, Minor Canon nevertheless,
standing with bent head to hear it, he being within five
years of forty: much as he had stood to hear the same words
from the same lips when he was within five months of four.

What is prettier than an old lady --- except
a young lady --- when her eyes are bright, when her figure
is trim and compact, when her face is cheerful and calm,
when her dress is as the dress of a china shepherdess: so
dainty in its colours, so individually assorted to herself,
so neatly moulded on her? Nothing is prettier, thought the
good Minor Canon frequently, when taking his seat at table
opposite his long-widowed mother. Her thought at such times
may be condensed into the two words that oftenest did duty
together in all her conversations: "My Sept!"

They were a good pair to sit breakfasting
together in Minor Canon Corner, Cloisterham. For Minor
Canon Corner was a quiet place in the shadow of the
Cathedral, which the cawing of the rooks, the echoing
footsteps of rare passers, the sound of the Cathedral bell,
or the roll of the Cathedral organ, seemed to render more
quiet than absolute silence. Swaggering fighting men had
had their centuries of ramping and raving about Minor Canon
Corner, and beaten serfs had had their centuries of drudging
and dying there, and powerful monks had had their centuries
of being sometimes useful and sometimes harmful there, and
behold they were all gone out of Minor Canon Corner, and so
much the better. Perhaps one of the highest uses of their
ever having been there, was, that there might be left
behind, that blessed air of tranquillity which pervaded
Minor Canon Corner, and that serenely romantic state of the
mind --- productive for the most part of pity and
forbearance --- which is engendered by a sorrowful story
that is all told, or a pathetic play that is played out.

Red-brick walls harmoniously toned down in
colour by time, strong-rooted ivy, latticed windows,
panelled rooms, big oaken beams in little places, and
stone-walled gardens where annual fruit yet ripened upon
monkish trees, were the principal surroundings of pretty old
Mrs. Crisparkle and the Reverend Septimus as they sat at
breakfast.

The pretty old lady, after reading it, had
just laid it down upon the breakfast-cloth. She handed it
over to her son.

Now, the old lady was exceedingly proud of
her bright eyes being so clear that she could read writing
without spectacles. Her son was also so proud of the
circumstance, and so dutifully bent on her deriving the
utmost possible gratification from it, that he had invented
the pretence that he himself could not read writing
without spectacles. Therefore he now assumed a pair, of
grave and prodigious proportions, which not only seriously
inconvenienced his nose and his breakfast, but seriously
impeded his perusal of the letter. For, he had the eyes of
a microscope and a telescope combined, when they were
unassisted.

"It's from Mr. Honeythunder, of
course," said the old lady, folding her arms.

"Of course," assented her son. He
then lamely read on:

"'Haven of Philanthropy,
"'Chief Offices, London, Wednesday.

"'DEAR MADAM,

"'I write in the ---;' In the what's this?
What does he write in?"

"In the chair," said the old lady.

The Reverend Septimus took off his
spectacles, that he might see her face, as he exclaimed:

"Why, what should he write in?"

"Bless me, bless me, Sept,"
returned the old lady, "you don't see the context!
Give it back to me, my dear."

Glad to get his spectacles off (for they
always made his eyes water), her son obeyed: murmuring that
his sight for reading manuscript got worse and worse daily.

"'I write,'" his mother went on,
reading very perspicuously and precisely, "'from the
chair, to which I shall probably be confined for some
hours.'"

Septimus looked at the row of chairs against
the wall, with a half-protesting and half-appealing
countenance.

"'We have,'" the old lady read on
with a little extra emphasis, "'a meeting of our
Convened Chief Composite Committee of Central and District
Philanthropists, at our Head Haven as above; and it is their
unanimous pleasure that I take the chair.'"

Septimus breathed more freely, and muttered:
"0! if he comes to that, let him."

"'Not to lose a day's post, I take the
opportunity of a long report being read, denouncing a public
miscreant ---'"

"It is a most extraordinary thing,"
interposed the gentle Minor Canon, laying down his knife and
fork to rub his ear in a vexed manner, "that these
Philanthropists are always denouncing somebody. And it is
another most extraordinary thing that they are always so
violently flush of miscreants!"

"'Denouncing a public
miscreant---'" --- the old lady resumed, "'to get
our little affair of business off my mind. I have spoken
with my two wards, Neville and Helena Landless, on the
subject of their defective education, and they give in to
the plan proposed; as I should have taken good care they
did, whether they liked it or not.'"

"And it is another most extraordinary
thing," remarked the Minor Canon in the same tone as
before, "that these philanthropists are so given to
seizing their fellow-creatures by the scruff of the neck,
and (as one may say) bumping them into the paths of peace.
--- I beg your pardon, Ma dear, for interrupting."

"'Therefore, dear Madam, you will please
prepare your son, the Rev. Mr. Septimus, to expect Neville
as an inmate to be read with, on Monday next. On the same
day Helena will accompany him to Cloisterham, to take up her
quarters at the Nuns' House, the establishment recommended
by yourself and son jointly. Please likewise to prepare for
her reception and tuition there. The terms in both cases
are understood to be exactly as stated to me in writing by
yourself, when I opened a correspondence with you on this
subject, after the honour of being introduced to you at your
sister's house in town here. With compliments to the Rev.
Mr. Septimus, I am, Dear Madam, Your affectionate brother
(In Philanthropy), LUKE HONEYTHUNDER.'"

"Well, Ma," said Septimus, after a
little more rubbing of his ear, "we must try it. There
can be no doubt that we have room for an inmate, and that I
have time to bestow upon him, and inclination too. I must
confess to feeling rather glad that he is not Mr.
Honeythunder himself. Though that seems wretchedly
prejudiced --- does it not? --- for I never saw him. Is he
a large man, Ma?"

"I should call him a large man, my
dear," the old lady replied after some hesitation,
"but that his voice is so much larger."

"Than himself?"

"Than anybody."

"Hah!" said Septimus. And finished
his breakfast as if the flavour of the Superior Family
Souchong, and also of the ham and toast and eggs, were a
little on the wane.

Mrs. Crisparkle's sister, another piece of
Dresden china, and matching her so neatly that they would
have made a delightful pair of ornaments for the two ends of
any capacious old-fashioned chimneypiece, and by right
should never have been seen apart, was the childless wife of
a clergyman holding Corporation preferment in London City.
Mr. Honeythunder in his public character of Professor of
Philanthropy had come to know Mrs. Crisparkle during the
last re-matching of the china ornaments (in other words
during her last annual visit to her sister), after a public
occasion of a philanthropic nature, when certain devoted
orphans of tender years had been glutted with plum buns, and
plump bumptiousness. These were all the antecedents known
in Minor Canon Corner of the coming pupils.

"I am sure you will agree with me,
Ma," said Mr. Crisparkle, after thinking the matter
over, "that the first thing to be done, is, to put
these young people as much at their ease as possible. There
is nothing disinterested in the notion, because we cannot be
at our ease with them unless they are at their ease with us.
Now, Jasper's nephew is down here at present; and like takes
to like, and youth takes to youth. He is a cordial young
fellow, and we will have him to meet the brother and sister
at dinner. That's three. We can't think of asking him,
without asking Jasper. That's four. Add Miss Twinkleton
and the fairy bride that is to be, and that's six. Add our
two selves, and that's eight. Would eight at a friendly
dinner at all put you out, Ma?"

"Nine would, Sept," returned the
old lady, visibly nervous.

"My dear Ma, I particularise
eight."

"The exact size of the table and the
room, my dear."

So it was settled that way: and when Mr.
Crisparkle called with his mother upon Miss Twinkleton, to
arrange for the reception of Miss Helena Landless at the
Nuns' House, the two other invitations having reference to
that establishment were proffered and accepted. Miss
Twinkleton did, indeed, glance at the globes, as regretting
that they were not formed to be taken out into society; but
became reconciled to leaving them behind. Instructions were
then despatched to the Philanthropist for the departure and
arrival, in good time for dinner, of Mr. Neville and Miss
Helena; and stock for soup became fragrant in the air of
Minor Canon Corner.

In those days there was no railway to
Cloisterham, and Mr. Sapsea said there never would be. Mr.
Sapsea said more; he said there never should be. And yet,
marvellous to consider, it has come to pass, in these days,
that Express Trains don't think Cloisterham worth stopping
at, but yell and whirl through it on their larger errands,
casting the dust off their wheels as a testimony against its
insignificance. Some remote fragment of Main Line to
somewhere else, there was, which was going to ruin the Money
Market if it failed, and Church and State if it succeeded,
and (of course), the Constitution, whether or no; but even
that had already so unsettled Cloisterham traffic, that the
traffic, deserting the high road, came sneaking in from an
unprecedented part of the country by a back stable-way, for
many years labelled at the corner: "Beware of the
Dog."

To this ignominious avenue of approach, Mr.
Crisparkle repaired, awaiting the arrival of a short, squat
omnibus, with a disproportionate heap of luggage on the roof
--- like a little Elephant with infinitely too much Castle
--- which was then the daily service between Cloisterham and
external mankind. As this vehicle lumbered up, Mr.
Crisparkle could hardly see anything else of it for a large
outside passenger seated on the box, with his elbows
squared, and his hands on his knees, compressing the driver
into a most uncomfortably small compass, and glowering about
him with a strongly-marked face.

"Is this Cloisterham?" demanded the
passenger, in a tremendous voice.

"It is," replied the driver,
rubbing himself as if he ached, after throwing the reins to
the ostler. "And I never was so glad to see it."

"Tell your master to make his box-seat
wider, then," returned the passenger. "Your
master is morally bound --- and ought to be legally, under
ruinous penalties --- to provide for the comfort of his
fellow-man."

The driver instituted, with the palms of his
hands, a superficial perquisition into the state of his
skeleton; which seemed to make him anxious.

"Have I sat upon you?" asked the
passenger.

"You have," said the driver, as if
he didn't like it at all.

"Take that card, my friend."

"I think I won't deprive you on
it," returned the driver, casting his eyes over it with
no great favour, without taking it. "What's the good
of it to me?"

"Be a Member of that Society," said
the passenger.

"What shall I get by it?" asked the
driver.

"Brotherhood," returned the
passenger, in a ferocious voice.

"Thankee," said the driver, very
deliberately, as he got down; "my mother was contented
with myself, and so am I. I don't want no brothers."

"But you must have them," replied
the passenger, also descending, "whether you like it or
not. I am your brother."

"Reverend Mr. Septimus? Glad to see
you, sir. Neville and Helena are inside. Having a little
succumbed of late, under the pressure of my public labours I
thought I would take a mouthful of fresh air, and come down
with them, and return at night. So you are the Reverend Mr.
Septimus, are you?" surveying him on the whole with
disappointment, and twisting a double eyeglass by its
ribbon, as if he were roasting it, but not otherwise using
it. "Hah! I expected to see you older, sir."

"I hope you will," was the
good-humoured reply.

"Eh?" demanded Mr. Honeythunder.

"Only a poor little joke. Not worth
repeating."

"Joke? Ay; I never see a joke,"
Mr. Honeythunder frowningly retorted. "A joke is
wasted upon me, sir. Where are they? Helena and Neville,
come here! Mr. Crisparkle has come down to meet you."

//A Handsome young fellow, and a handsome girl;
both dark and rich in colour; she quite gipsy like; something
untamed about them both; a certain air upon them of hunter and
huntress; yet a certain air of being the objects of the chase,
rather than the followers.//

++An unusually handsome lithe young fellow, and
an unusually handsome lithe girl; much alike; both very
dark, and very rich in colour; she of almost the gipsy type;
something untamed about them both; a certain air upon them
of hunter and huntress; yet withal a certain air of being
the objects of the chase, rather than the followers.++
Slender, supple, quick of eye and limb; half shy, half
defiant; fierce of look; an indefinable kind of pause coming
and going on their whole expression, both of face and form,
which might be equally likened to the pause before a crouch
or a bound. The rough mental notes made in the first five
minutes by Mr. Crisparkle would have read thus,
verbatim.

He invited Mr. Honeythunder to dinner, with a
troubled mind (for the discomfiture of the dear old china
shepherdess lay heavy on it), and gave his arm to Helena
Landless. Both she and her brother, as they walked all
together through the ancient streets, took great delight in
what he pointed out of the Cathedral and the Monastery ruin,
and wondered --- so his notes ran on --- much as if they
were beautiful barbaric captives brought from some wild
tropical dominion. Mr. Honeythunder walked in the middle of
the road, shouldering the natives out of his way, and loudly
developing a scheme he had, for making a raid on all the
unemployed persons in the United Kingdom, laying them every
one by the heels in jail, and forcing them, on pain of
prompt extermination, to become philanthropists.

Mrs. Crisparkle had need of her own share of
philanthropy when she beheld this very large and very good
excrescence on the little party. Always something in the
nature of a Boil upon the face of society, Mr. Honeythunder
expanded into an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon Corner.
Though it was not literally true, as was facetiously charged
against him by public unbelievers, that he called aloud to
his fellow-creatures: "Curse your souls and bodies,
come here and be blessed!" still his philanthropy was
of that gunpowderous sort that the difference between it and
animosity was hard to determine. You were to abolish
military force, but you were first to bring all commanding
officers who had done their duty, to trial by court-martial
for that offence, and shoot them. You were to abolish war,
but were to make converts by making war upon them, and
charging them with loving war as the apple of their eye.
You were to have no capital punishment, but were first to
sweep off the face of the earth all legislators, jurists,
and judges, who were of the contrary opinion. You were to
have universal concord, and were to get it by eliminating
all the people who wouldn't, or conscientiously couldn't, be
concordant. You were to love your brother as yourself, but
after an indefinite interval of maligning him (very much as
if you hated him), and calling him all manner of names.
Above all things, you were to do nothing in private, or on
your own account. You were to go to the offices of the
Haven of Philanthropy, and put your name down as a Member
and a Professing Philanthropist. Then, you were to pay up
your subscription, get your card of membership and your
riband and medal, and were evermore to live upon a platform,
and evermore to say what Mr. Honeythunder said, and what the
Treasurer said, and what the sub-Treasurer said, and what
the Committee said, and what the sub-Committee said, and
what the Secretary said, and what the Vice-Secretary said.
And this was usually said in the unanimously-carried
resolution under hand and seal, to the effect: "That
this assembled Body of Professing Philanthropists views,
with indignant scorn and contempt, not unmixed with utter
detestation and loathing abhorrence" --- in short, the
baseness of all those who do not belong to it, and pledges
itself to make as many obnoxious statements as possible
about them, without being at all particular as to facts.

The dinner was a most doleful breakdown. The
philanthropist deranged the symmetry of the table, sat
himself in the way of the waiting, blocked up the
thoroughfare, and drove Mr. Tope (who assisted the
parlour-maid) to the verge of distraction by passing plates
and dishes on, over his own head. Nobody could talk to
anybody, because he held forth to everybody at once, as if
the company had no individual existence, but were a Meeting.
He impounded the Reverend Mr. Septimus, as an official
personage to be addressed, or kind of human peg to hang his
oratorical hat on, and fell into the exasperating habit,
common among such orators, of impersonating him as a wicked
and weak opponent. Thus, he would ask: "And will you,
sir, now stultify yourself by telling me" --- and so
forth, when the innocent man had not opened his lips, nor
meant to open them. Or he would say: "Now see, sir, to
what a position you are reduced. I will leave you no
escape. After exhausting all the resources of fraud and
falsehood, during years upon years; after exhibiting a
combination of dastardly meanness with ensanguined daring,
such as the world has not often witnessed; you have now the
hypocrisy to bend the knee before the most degraded of
mankind, and to sue and whine and howl for mercy!"
Whereat the unfortunate Minor Canon would look, in part
indignant and in part perplexed; while his worthy mother sat
bridling, with tears in her eyes, and the remainder of the
party lapsed into a sort of gelatinous state, in which there
was no flavour or solidity, and very little resistance.

But the gush of philanthropy that burst forth
when the departure of Mr. Honeythunder began to impend, must
have been highly gratifying to the feelings of that
distinguished man. His coffee was produced, by the special
activity of Mr. Tope, a full hour before he wanted it. Mr.
Crisparkle sat with his watch in his hand for about the same
period, lest he should overstay his time. The four young
people were unanimous in believing that the Cathedral clock
struck three-quarters, when it actually struck but one.
Miss Twinkleton estimated the distance to the omnibus at
five-and-twenty minutes' walk, when it was really five. The
affectionate kindness of the whole circle hustled him into
his greatcoat, and shoved him out into the moonlight, as if
he were a fugitive traitor with whom they sympathised, and a
troop of horse were at the back door. Mr. Crisparkle and
his new charge, who took him to the omnibus, were so fervent
in their apprehensions of his catching cold, that they shut
him up in it instantly and left him, with still half-an-hour
to spare.

"I KNOW very little of that gentleman, sir,"
said Neville to the Minor Canon as they turned back.

"You know very little of your
guardian?" the Minor Canon repeated.

"Almost nothing!"

"How came he---"

"To be my guardian? I'll tell
you, sir. I suppose you know that we come (my sister and I)
from Ceylon?"

"Indeed, no."

"I wonder at that. We lived with a
stepfather there. Our mother died there, when we were
little children. We have had a wretched existence. She
made him our guardian, and he was a miserly wretch who
grudged us food to eat, and clothes to wear. At his death,
he passed us over to this man; for no better reason that I
know of, than his being a friend or connexion of his, whose
name was always in print and catching his attention."

"That was lately, I suppose?"

"Quite lately, sir. This stepfather of
ours was a cruel brute as well as a grinding one. It is
well he died when he did, or I might have killed him."

Mr. Crisparkle stopped short in the moonlight
and looked at his hopeful pupil in consternation.

"I surprise you, sir?" he said,
with a quick change to a submissive manner.

"You shock me; unspeakably shock
me."

The pupil hung his head for a little while,
as they walked on, and then said: "You never saw him
beat your sister. I have seen him beat mine, more than once
or twice, and I never forgot it."

"Nothing," said Mr. Crisparkle,
"not even a beloved and beautiful sister's tears under
dastardly ill-usage;" he became less severe, in spite
of himself, as his indignation rose; "could justify
those horrible expressions that you used."

"I am sorry I used them, and especially
to you, sir. I beg to recall them. But permit me to set
you right on one point. You spoke of my sister's tears. My
sister would have let him tear her to pieces, before she
would have let him believe that he could make her shed a
tear."

Mr. Crisparkle reviewed those mental notes of
his, and was neither at all surprised to hear it, nor at all
disposed to question it.

"Perhaps you will think it strange,
sir," --- this was said in a hesitating voice ---
"that I should so soon ask you to allow me to confide
in you, and to have the kindness to hear a word or two from
me in my defence?"

"I think I am, sir. At least I know I
should be, if you were better acquainted with my
character."

"Well, Mr. Neville," was the
rejoinder. "What if you leave me to find it out?"

"Since it is your pleasure, sir,"
answered the young man, with a quick change in his manner to
sullen disappointment: "since it is your pleasure to
check me in my impulse, I must submit."

There was that in the tone of this short
speech which made the conscientious man to whom it was
addressed uneasy. It hinted to him that he might, without
meaning it, turn aside a trustfulness beneficial to a
mis-shapen young mind and perhaps to his own power of
directing and improving it. They were within sight of the
lights in his windows, and he stopped.

"Let us turn back and take a turn or two
up and down, Mr. Neville, or you may not have time to finish
what you wish to say to me. You are hasty in thinking that
I mean to check you. Quite the contrary. I invite your
confidence."

"You have invited it, sir, without
knowing it, ever since I came here. I say 'ever since,' as
if I had been here a week. The truth is, we came here (my
sister and I) to quarrel with you, and affront you, and
break away again."

"Really?" said Mr. Crisparkle, at a
dead loss for anything else to say.

"You see, we could not know what you
were beforehand, sir; could we?"

"Clearly not," said Mr. Crisparkle.

"And having liked no one else with whom
we have ever been brought into contact, we had made up our
minds not to like you."

"Really?" said Mr. Crisparkle
again.

"But we do like you, sir, and we see an
unmistakable difference between your house and your
reception of us, and anything else we have ever known. This
--- and my happening to be alone with you --- and everything
around us seeming so quiet and peaceful after Mr.
Honeythunder's departure --- and Cloisterham being so old
and grave and beautiful, with the moon shining on it ---
these things inclined me to open my heart."

"I quite understand, Mr. Neville. And
it is salutary to listen to such influences."

"In describing my own imperfections,
sir, I must ask you not to suppose that I am describing my
sister's. She has come out of the disadvantages of our
miserable life, as much better than I am, as that Cathedral
tower is higher than those chimneys."

Mr. Crisparkle in his own breast was not so
sure of this.

"I have had, sir, from my earliest
remembrance, to suppress a deadly and bitter hatred. This
has made me secret and revengeful. I have been always
tyrannically held down by the strong hand. This has driven
me, in my weakness, to the resource of being false and mean.
I have been stinted of education, liberty, money, dress, the
very necessaries of life, the commonest pleasures of
childhood, the commonest possessions of youth. This has
caused me to be utterly wanting in I don't know what
emotions, or remembrances, or good instincts --- I have not
even a name for the thing, you see! --- that you have had to
work upon in other young men to whom you have been
accustomed."

"This is evidently true. But this is
not encouraging," thought Mr. Crisparkle as they turned
again.

"And to finish with, sir: I have been
brought up among abject and servile dependents, of an
inferior race, and I may easily have contracted some
affinity with them. Sometimes, I don't know but that it may
be a drop of what is tigerish in their blood."

"As in the case of that remark just
now," thought Mr. Crisparkle.

//"In reference to my sister, sir (we are
twin children), you ought to know, to her honour, that nothing in
our misery ever cowed her, though it often cowed me. When we ran
away from it (we ran away four times in five years, to be very
soon brought back and punished), the flight was always of her
planning. Each time she dressed as a boy, and showed the daring
of a man. I take it we were eight years old when we first
decamped; but I remember, when I lost the pocket-knife with which
she was to have cut her hair short, that she tried to tear it
out, or bite it off.//

"++In a last word of reference to my
sister, sir (we are twin children), you ought to know, to
her honour, that nothing in our misery ever subdued her,
though it often cowed me. When we ran away from it (we ran
away four times in six years, to be soon brought back and
cruelly punished), the flight was always of her planning and
leading. Each time she dressed as a boy, and showed the
daring of a man. I take it we were seven years old when we
first decamped; but I remember, when I lost the pocket-knife
with which she was to have cut her hair short, how
desperately she tried to tear it out, or bite it off.++ I
have nothing further to say, sir, except that I hope you
will bear with me and make allowance for me."

"Of that, Mr. Neville, you may be
sure," returned the Minor Canon, "I don't preach
more than I can help, and I will not repay your confidence
with a sermon. But I entreat you to bear in mind, very
seriously and steadily, that if I am to do you any good, it
can only be with your own assistance; and that you can only
render that, efficiently, by seeking aid from Heaven."

"I will try to do my part, sir."

"And, Mr. Neville, I will try to do
mine. Here is my hand on it. May God bless our
endeavours!"

They were now standing at his house-door, and
a cheerful sound of voices and laughter was heard within.

"We will take one more turn before going
in," said Mr. Crisparkle, "for I want to ask you a
question. When you said you were in a changed mind
concerning me, you spoke, not only for yourself, but for
your sister too?"

"Undoubtedly I did, sir."

"Excuse me, Mr. Neville, but I think you
have had no opportunity of communicating with your sister,
since I met you. Mr. Honeythunder was very eloquent; but
perhaps I may venture to say, without ill-nature, that he
rather monopolised the occasion. May you not have answered
for your sister without sufficient warrant?"

Neville shook his head with a proud smile.

"You don't know, sir, yet, what a
complete understanding can exist between my sister and me,
though no spoken word --- perhaps hardly as much as a look
--- may have passed between us. She not only feels as I
have described, but she very well knows that I am taking
this opportunity of speaking to you, both for her and for
myself."

Mr. Crisparkle looked in his face, with some
incredulity; but his face expressed such absolute and firm
conviction of the truth of what he said, that Mr. Crisparkle
looked at the pavement, and mused until they came to his
door again.

"I will ask for one more turn, sir, this
time," said the young man, with a rather heightened
colour rising in his face. "But for Mr. Honeythunder's
--- I think you called it eloquence, sir?" (somewhat
slyly.)

"I --- yes, I called it eloquence,"
said Mr. Crisparkle.

"But for Mr. Honeythunder's eloquence, I
might have had no need to ask you what I am going to ask
you. This Mr. Edwin Drood, sir: I think that's the
name?"

"Quite correct," said Mr.
Crisparkle. "D-r-double o-d."

"Does he --- or did he --- read with
you, sir?"

"Never, Mr. Neville. He comes here
visiting his relation, Mr Jasper."

"Is Miss Bud his relation too,
sir?"

("Now, why should he ask that, with
sudden superciliousness?" thought Mr. Crisparkle.)
Then he explained, aloud, what he knew of the little story
of their betrothal.

"O! that's it, is it?"
said the young man. "I understand his air of
proprietorship now!"

This was said so evidently to himself, or to
anybody rather than Mr. Crisparkle, that the latter
instinctively felt as if to notice it would be almost
tantamount to noticing a passage in a letter which he had
read by chance over the writer's shoulder. A moment
afterwards they re-entered the house

Mr. Jasper was seated at the piano as they
came into his drawing-room, and was accompanying Miss
Rosebud while she sang. It was a consequence of his playing
the accompaniment without notes, and of her being a heedless
little creature, very apt to go wrong, that he followed her
lips most attentively, with his eyes as well as hands;
carefully and softly hinting the key-note from time to time.
Standing with an arm drawn round her, but with a face far
more intent on Mr. Jasper than on her singing, stood Helena,
between whom and her brother an instantaneous recognition
passed, in which Mr. Crisparkle saw, or thought he saw, the
understanding that had been spoken of, flash out. Mr.
Neville then took his admiring station, leaning against the
piano, opposite the singer; Mr. Crisparkle sat down by the
china shepherdess; Edwin Drood gallantly furled and unfurled
Miss Twinkleton's fan; and that lady passively claimed that
sort of exhibitor's proprietorship in the accomplishment on
view, which Mr. Tope, the Verger, daily claimed in the
Cathedral service.

The song went on. It was a sorrowful strain
of parting, and the fresh young voice was very plaintive and
tender. As Jasper watched the pretty lips, and ever and
again hinted the one note, as though it were a low whisper
from himself, the voice became less steady, until all at
once the singer broke into a burst of tears, and shrieked
out, with her hands over her eyes: "I can't bear this!
I am frightened! Take me away!"

With one swift turn of her lithe figure,
Helena laid the little beauty on a sofa, as if she had never
caught her up. Then, on one knee beside her, and with one
hand upon her rosy mouth, while with the other she appealed
to all the rest, Helena said to them: "It's nothing;
it's all over; don't speak to her for one minute, and she is
well!"

Jasper's hands had, in the same instant,
lifted themselves from the keys, and were now poised above
them, as though he waited to resume. In that attitude he
yet sat quiet: not even looking round, when all the rest had
changed their places and were reassuring one another.

"Pussy's not used to an audience; that's
the fact," said Edwin Drood. "She got nervous,
and couldn't hold out. Besides, Jack, you are such a
conscientious master, and require so much, that I believe
you make her afraid of you. No wonder."

"No wonder," repeated Helena.

"There, Jack, you heard! You would be
afraid of him, under similar circumstances, wouldn't you,
Miss Landless?"

"Not under any circumstances,"
returned Helena.

Jasper brought down his hands, looked over
his shoulder, and begged to thank Miss Landless for her
vindication of his character. Then he fell to dumbly
playing, without striking the notes, while his little pupil
was taken to an open window for air, and was otherwise
petted and restored. When she was brought back, his place
was empty. "Jack's gone, Pussy," Edwin told her.
"I am more than half afraid he didn't like to be
charged with being the Monster who had frightened you."
But she answered never a word, and shivered, as if they had
made her a little too cold.

Miss Twinkleton now opining that indeed these
were late hours, Mrs. Crisparkle, for finding ourselves
outside the walls of the Nuns' House, and that we who
undertook the formation of the future wives and mothers of
England (the last words in a lower voice, as requiring to be
communicated in confidence) were really bound (voice coming
up again) to set a better example than one of rakish habits,
wrappers were put in requisition, and the two young
cavaliers volunteered to see the ladies home. It was soon
done, and the gate of the Nuns' House closed upon them.

The boarders had retired, and only Mrs.
Tisher in solitary vigil awaited the new pupil. Her bedroom
being within Rosa's, very little introduction or explanation
was necessary, before she was placed in charge of her new
friend, and left for the night.

"This is a blessed relief, my
dear," said Helena. "I have been dreading all
day, that I should be brought to bay at this time."

"There are not many of us,"
returned Rosa, "and we are good-natured girls; at least
the others are; I can answer for them."

"I can answer for you," laughed
Helena, searching the lovely little face with her dark,
fiery eyes, and tenderly caressing the small figure.
"You will be a friend to me, won't you?"

"I hope so. But the idea of my being a
friend to you seems too absurd, though."

"Why?"

"O, I am such a mite of a thing, and you
are so womanly and handsome. You seem to have resolution
and power enough to crush me. I shrink into nothing by the
side of your presence even."

"I am a neglected creature, my dear,
unacquainted with all accomplishments, sensitively conscious
that I have everything to learn, and deeply ashamed to own
my ignorance."

"And yet you acknowledge everything to
me!" said Rosa.

"My pretty one, can I help it? There is
a fascination in you."

"O! is there though?" pouted Rosa,
half in jest and half in earnest. "What a pity Master
Eddy doesn't feel it more!"

Of course her relations towards that young
gentleman had been already imparted in Minor Canon Corner.

"Why, surely he must love you with all
his heart!" cried Helena, with an earnestness that
threatened to blaze into ferocity if he didn't.

"Eh? O, well, I suppose he does,"
said Rosa, pouting again; "I am sure I have no right to
say he doesn't. Perhaps it's my fault. Perhaps I am not as
nice to him as I ought to be. I don't think I am. But it
is so ridiculous!"

Helena's eyes demanded what was.

"We are," said Rosa,
answering as if she had spoken. "We are such a
ridiculous couple. And we are always quarrelling."

"Why?"

"Because we both know we are ridiculous,
my dear!" Rosa gave that answer as if it were the most
conclusive answer in the world.

Helena's masterful look was intent upon her
face for a few moments, and then she impulsively put out
both her hands and said:

"You will be my friend and help
me?"

"Indeed, my dear, I will," replied
Rosa, in a tone of affectionate childishness that went
straight and true to her heart; "I will be as good a
friend as such a mite of a thing can be to such a noble
creature as you. And be a friend to me, please; I don't
understand myself: and I want a friend who can understand
me, very much indeed."

Helena Landless kissed her, and retaining
both her hands said:

"Who is Mr. Jasper?"

Rosa turned aside her head in answering:
"Eddy's uncle, and my music-master."

"You do not love him?"

"Ugh!" She put her hands up to her
face, and shook with fear or horror.

"You know that he loves you?"

"O, don't, don't, don't!" cried
Rosa, dropping on her knees, and clinging to her new
resource. "Don't tell me of it! He terrifies me. He
haunts my thoughts, like a dreadful ghost. I feel that I am
never safe from him. I feel as if he could pass in through
the wall when he is spoken of." She actually did look
round, as if she dreaded to see him standing in the shadow
behind her.

"Try to tell me about it, darling."

"Yes, I will, I will. Because you are
so strong. But hold me the while, and stay with me
afterwards."

"My child! You speak as if he had
threatened you in some dark way."

"He has never spoken to me about ---
that. Never."

"What has he done?"

"He has made a slave of me with his
looks. He has forced me to understand him, without his
saying a word; and he has forced me to keep silence, without
his uttering a threat. When I play, he never moves his eyes
from my hands. When I sing, he never moves his eyes from my
lips. When he corrects me, and strikes a note, or a chord,
or plays a passage, he himself is in the sounds, whispering
that he pursues me as a lover, and commanding me to keep his
secret. I avoid his eyes, but he forces me to see them
without looking at them. Even when a glaze comes over them
(which is sometimes the case), and he seems to wander away
into a frightful sort of dream in which he threatens most,
he obliges me to know it, and to know that he is sitting
close at my side, more terrible to me than ever."

"What is this imagined threatening,
pretty one? What is threatened?"

"I don't know. I have never even dared
to think or wonder what it is."

"And was this all, to-night?"

"This was all; except that to-night when
he watched my lips so closely as I was singing, besides
feeling terrified I felt ashamed and passionately hurt. It
was as if he kissed me, and I couldn't bear it, but cried
out. You must never breathe this to any one. Eddy is
devoted to him. But you said to-night that you would not be
afraid of him, under any circumstances, and that gives me -
-- who am so much afraid of him --- courage to tell only
you. Hold me! Stay with me! I am too frightened to be
left by myself."

The lustrous gipsy-face drooped over the
clinging arms and bosom, and the wild black hair fell down
protectingly over the childish form. There was a slumbering
gleam of fire in the intense dark eyes, though they were
then softened with compassion and admiration. Let
whomsoever it most concerned look well to it!

THE two young men, having seen the damsels, their
charges, enter the courtyard of the Nuns' House, and finding
themselves coldly stared at by the brazen door-plate, as if
the battered old beau with the glass in his eye were
insolent, look at one another, look along the perspective of
the moonlit street, and slowly walk away together.

"Do you stay here long, Mr. Drood?"
says Neville.

"Not this time," is the careless
answer. "I leave for London again, to-morrow. But I
shall be here, off and on, until next Midsummer; then I
shall take my leave of Cloisterham, and England too; for
many a long day, I expect."

"Are you going abroad?"

"Going to wake up Egypt a little,"
is the condescending answer.

"Are you reading?"

"Reading?" repeats Edwin Drood,
with a touch of contempt. "No. Doing, working,
engineering. My small patrimony was left a part of the
capital of the Firm I am with, by my father, a former
partner; and I am a charge upon the Firm until I come of
age; and then I step into my modest share in the concern.
Jack --- you met him at dinner --- is, until then, my
guardian and trustee."

"I heard from Mr. Crisparkle of your
other good fortune."

"What do you mean by my other good
fortune?"

Neville has made his remark in a watchfully
advancing, and yet furtive and shy manner, very expressive
of that peculiar air already noticed, of being at once
hunter and hunted. Edwin has made his retort with an
abruptness not at all polite. They stop and interchange a
rather heated look.

"By George!" cries Edwin, leading
on again at a somewhat quicker pace; "everybody in this
chattering old Cloisterham refers to it. I wonder no
public-house has been set up, with my portrait for the sign
of The Betrothed's Head. Or Pussy's portrait. One or the
other."

"But," resumes Neville, "I am
accountable for mentioning it to you. And I did so, on the
supposition that you could not fail to be highly proud of
it."

Now, there are these two curious touches of
human nature working the secret springs of this dialogue.
Neville Landless is already enough impressed by Little
Rosebud, to feel indignant that Edwin Drood (far below her)
should hold his prize so lightly. Edwin Drood is already
enough impressed by Helena, to feel indignant that Helena's
brother (far below her) should dispose of him so coolly, and
put him out of the way so entirely.

However, the last remark had better be
answered. So, says Edwin:

"I don't know, Mr. Neville"
(adopting that mode of address from Mr. Crisparkle),
"that what people are proudest of, they usually talk
most about; I don't know either, that what they are proudest
of, they most like other people to talk about. But I live a
busy life, and I speak under correction by you readers, who
ought to know everything, and I daresay do."

By this time they had both become savage; Mr.
Neville out in the open; Edwin Drood under the transparent
cover of a popular tune, and a stop now and then to pretend
to admire picturesque effects in the moonlight before him.

"It does not seem to me very civil in
you," remarks Neville, at length, "to reflect upon
a stranger who comes here, not having had your advantages,
to try to make up for lost time. But, to be sure,
I was not brought up in 'busy life,' and my ideas
of civility were formed among Heathens."

"Perhaps, the best civility, whatever
kind of people we are brought up among," retorts Edwin
Drood, "is to mind our own business. If you will set
me that example, I promise to follow it."

"Do you know that you take a great deal
too much upon yourself?" is the angry rejoinder,
"and that in the part of the world I come from, you
would be called to account for it?"

"By whom, for instance?" asks Edwin
Drood, coming to a halt, and surveying the other with a look
of disdain.

But, here a startling right hand is laid on
Edwin's shoulder, and Jasper stands between them. For, it
would seem that he, too, has strolled round by the Nuns'
House, and has come up behind them on the shadowy side of
the road.

"Ned, Ned, Ned!" he says; "we
must have no more of this. I don't like this. I have
overheard high words between you two. Remember, my dear
boy, you are almost in the position of host to-night. You
belong, as it were, to the place, and in a manner represent
it towards a stranger. Mr. Neville is a stranger, and you
should respect the obligations of hospitality. And, Mr.
Neville," laying his left hand on the inner shoulder of
that young gentleman, and thus walking on between them, hand
to shoulder on either side; "you will pardon me; but I
appeal to you to govern your temper too. Now, what is
amiss? But why ask! Let there be nothing amiss, and the
question is superfluous. We are all three on a good
understanding, are we not?"

After a silent struggle between the two young
men who shall speak last, Edwin Drood strikes in with:
"So far as I am concerned, Jack, there is no anger in
me."

"Nor in me," says Neville Landless,
though not so freely; or perhaps so carelessly. "But
if Mr. Drood knew all that lies behind me, far away from
here, he might know better how it is that sharp-edged words
have sharp edges to wound me."

"Perhaps," says Jasper, in a
soothing manner, "we had better not qualify our good
understanding. We had better not say anything having the
appearance of a remonstrance or condition; it might not seem
generous. Frankly and freely, you see there is no anger in
Ned. Frankly and freely, there is no anger in you, Mr.
Neville?"

"None at all, Mr. Jasper." Still,
not quite so frankly or so freely; or, be it said once
again, not quite so carelessly perhaps.

"All over, then! Now, my bachelor
gatehouse is a few yards from here, and the heater is on the
fire, and the wine and glasses are on the table, and it is
not a stone's throw from Minor Canon Corner. Ned, you are
up and away to-morrow. We will carry Mr. Neville in with
us, to take a stirrup-cup."

"With all my heart, Jack."

"And with all mine, Mr. Jasper."
Neville feels it impossible to say less, but would rather
not go. He has an impression upon him that he has lost hold
of his temper; feels that Edwin Drood's coolness, so far
from being infectious, makes him red-hot.

Mr. Jasper, still walking in the centre, hand
to shoulder on either side, beautifully turns the Refrain of
a drinking song, and they all go up to his rooms. There,
the first object visible, when he adds the light of a lamp
to that of the fire, is the portrait over the chimneypiece.
It is not an object calculated to improve the understanding
between the two young men, as rather awkwardly reviving the
subject of their difference. Accordingly, they both glance
at it consciously, but say nothing. Jasper, however (who
would appear from his conduct to have gained but an
imperfect clue to the cause of their late high words),
directly calls attention to it.

"You recognise that picture, Mr.
Neville?" shading the lamp to throw the light upon it.

"I recognise it, but it is far from
flattering the original."

"O, you are hard upon it! It was done
by Ned, who made me a present of it.

"I am sorry for that, Mr. Drood."
Neville apologises, with a real intention to apologise;
"if I had known I was in the artist's presence---"

"O, a joke, sir, a mere joke,"
Edwin cuts in, with a provoking yawn. "A little
humouring of Pussy's points! I'm going to paint her
gravely, one of these days, if she's good."

The air of leisurely patronage and
indifference with which this is said, as the speaker throws
himself back in a chair and clasps his hands at the back of
his head, as a rest for it, is very exasperating to the
excitable and excited Neville. Jasper looks observantly
from the one to the other, slightly smiles, and turns his
back to mix a jug of mulled wine at the fire. It seems to
require much mixing and compounding.

"I suppose, Mr. Neville," says
Edwin, quick to resent the indignant protest against himself
in the face of young Landless, which is fully as visible as
the portrait, or the fire, or the lamp: "I suppose that
if you painted the picture of your lady love---"

"I can't paint," is the hasty
interruption.

"That's your misfortune, and not your
fault. You would if you could. But if you could, I suppose
you would make her (no matter what she was in reality),
Juno, Minerva, Diana, and Venus, all in one. Eh?"

"I have no lady love, and I can't
say."

"If I were to try my hand," says
Edwin, with a boyish boastfulness getting up in him,
"on a portrait of Miss Landless --- in earnest, mind
you; in earnest --- you should see what I could do!"

"My sister's consent to sit for it being
first got, I suppose? As it never will be got, I am afraid
I shall never see what you can do. I must bear the
loss."

Jasper turns round from the fire, fills a
large goblet glass for Neville, fills a large goblet glass
for Edwin, and hands each his own; then fills for himself,
saying:

"Come, Mr. Neville, we are to drink to
my nephew, Ned. As it is his foot that is in the stirrup -
-- metaphorically --- our stirrup-cup is to be devoted to
him. Ned, my dearest fellow, my love!"

Jasper sets the example of nearly emptying
his glass, and Neville follows it. Edwin Drood says,
"Thank you both very much," and follows the double
example.

"Look at him," cries Jasper,
stretching out his hand admiringly and tenderly, though
rallyingly too. "See where he lounges so easily, Mr.
Neville! The world is all before him where to choose. A
life of stirring work and interest, a life of change and
excitement, a life of domestic ease and love! Look at
him!"

Edwin Drood's face has become quickly and
remarkably flushed with the wine; so has the face of Neville
Landless. Edwin still sits thrown back in his chair, making
that rest of clasped hands for his head.

"See how little he heeds it all!"
Jasper proceeds in a bantering vein. "It is hardly
worth his while to pluck the golden fruit that hangs ripe on
the tree for him. And yet consider the contrast, Mr.
Neville. You and I have no prospect of stirring work and
interest, or of change and excitement, or of domestic ease
and love. You and I have no prospect (unless you are more
fortunate than I am, which may easily be), but the tedious
unchanging round of this dull place."

"Upon my soul, Jack," says Edwin,
complacently, "I feel quite apologetic for having my
way smoothed as you describe. But you know what I know
Jack, and it may not be so very easy as it seems, after all.
May it, Pussy?" To the portrait, with a snap of his
thumb and finger. "We have got to hit it off yet;
haven't we Pussy? You know what I mean, Jack."

His speech has become thick and indistinct.
Jasper, quiet and self-possessed, looks to Neville, as
expecting his answer or comment. When Neville speaks,
his speech is also thick and indistinct.

"It might have been better for Mr. Drood
to have known some hardships," he says, defiantly.

"Pray," retorts Edwin, turning
merely his eyes in that direction, "pray why might it
have been better for Mr. Drood to have known some
hardships?"

"Ay," Jasper assents, with an air
of interest; "let us know why?"

"Because they might have made him more
sensible," says Neville, "of good fortune that is
not by any means necessarily the result of his own
merits."

Mr. Jasper quickly looks to his nephew for
his rejoinder.

"Have you known hardships, may
I ask?" says Edwin Drood, sitting upright.

Mr. Jasper quickly looks to the other for his
retort.

"I have."

"And what have they made you
sensible of?"

Mr. Jasper's play of eyes between the two
holds good throughout the dialogue, to the end.

"I have told you once before
to-night."

"You have done nothing of the
sort."

"I tell you I have. That you take a
great deal too much upon yourself."

"You added something else to that, if I
remember?"

"Yes, I did say something else."

"Say it again."

"I said that in the part of the world I
come from, you would be called to account for it."

"Only there?" cries Edwin Drood,
with a contemptuous laugh. "A long way off, I believe?
Yes; I see! That part of the world is at a safe
distance."

"Say here, then," rejoins the
other, rising in a fury. "Say anywhere! Your vanity
is intolerable, your conceit is beyond endurance; you talk
as if you were some rare and precious prize, instead of a
common boaster. You are a common fellow, and a common
boaster."

"Pooh, pooh," says Edwin Drood,
equally furious, but more collected; "how should you
know? You may know a black common fellow, or a black common
boaster, when you see him (and no doubt you have a large
acquaintance that way); but you are no judge of white
men."

This insulting allusion to his dark skin
infuriates Neville to that violent degree, that he flings
the dregs of his wine at Edwin Drood, and is in the act of
flinging the goblet after it, when his arm is caught in the
nick of time by Jasper.

"Ned, my dear fellow!" he cries in
a loud voice; "I entreat you, I command you, to be
still!" There has been a rush of all the three, and a
clattering of glasses and overturning of chairs. "Mr.
Neville, for shame! Give this glass to me. Open your hand,
sir. I WILL have it!"

But Neville throws him off, and pauses for an
instant, in a raging passion, with the goblet yet in his
uplifted hand. Then, he dashes it down under the grate,
with such force that the broken splinters fly out again in a
shower; and he leaves the house.

When he first emerges into the night air,
nothing around him is still or steady; nothing around him
shows like what it is; he only knows that he stands with a
bare head in the midst of a blood-red whirl, waiting to be
struggled with, and to struggle to the death.

But, nothing happening, and the moon looking
down upon him as if he were dead after a fit of wrath, he
holds his steam-hammer beating head and heart, and staggers
away. Then, he becomes half-conscious of having heard
himself bolted and barred out, like a dangerous animal; and
thinks what shall he do?

Some wildly passionate ideas of the river
dissolve under the spell of the moonlight on the Cathedral
and the graves, and the remembrance of his sister, and the
thought of what he owes to the good man who has but that
very day won his confidence and given him his pledge. He
repairs to Minor Canon Corner, and knocks softly at the
door.

It is Mr. Crisparkle's custom to sit up last
of the early household, very softly touching his piano and
practising his favourite parts in concerted vocal music.
The south wind that goes where it lists, by way of Minor
Canon Corner on a still night, is not more subdued than Mr.
Crisparkle at such times, regardful of the slumbers of the
china shepherdess.

His knock is immediately answered by Mr.
Crisparkle himself. When he opens the door, candle in hand,
his cheerful face falls, and disappointed amazement is in
it.

"Mr. Neville! In this disorder! Where
have you been?"

"I have been to Mr. Jasper's, sir. With
his nephew."

"Come in."

The Minor Canon props him by the elbow with a
strong hand (in a strictly scientific manner, worthy of his
morning trainings), and turns him into his own little
book-room, and shuts the door.

"I have begun ill, sir. I have begun
dreadfully ill."

"Too true. You are not sober, Mr.
Neville."

"I am afraid I am not, sir, though I can
satisfy you at another time that I have had a very little
indeed to drink, and that it overcame me in the strangest
and most sudden manner."

"Mr. Neville, Mr. Neville," says
the Minor Canon, shaking his head with a sorrowful smile;
"I have heard that said before."

"I think --- my mind is much confused,
but I think --- it is equally true of Mr. Jasper's nephew,
sir."

"Very likely," is the dry
rejoinder.

"We quarrelled, sir. He insulted me
most grossly. He had heated that tigerish blood I told you
of to-day, before then."

"Mr. Neville," rejoins the Minor
Canon, mildly, but firmly: "I request you not to speak
to me with that clenched right hand. Unclench it, if you
please."

"He goaded me, sir," pursues the
young man, instantly obeying, "beyond my power of
endurance. I cannot say whether or no he meant it at first,
but he did it. He certainly meant it at last. In short,
sir," with an irrepressible outburst, "in the
passion into which he lashed me, I would have cut him down
if I could, and I tried to do it."

"You know your room, for I showed it you
before dinner; but I will accompany you to it once more.
Your arm, if you please. Softly, for the house is all
a-bed."

Scooping his hand into the same scientific
elbow-rest as before, and backing it up with the inert
strength of his arm, as skilfully as a Police Expert, and
with an apparent repose quite unattainable by novices, Mr.
Crisparkle conducts his pupil to the pleasant and orderly
old room prepared for him. Arrived there, the young man
throws himself into a chair, and, flinging his arms upon his
reading-table, rests his head upon them with an air of
wretched self-reproach.

The gentle Minor Canon has had it in his
thoughts to leave the room, without a word. But looking
round at the door, and seeing this dejected figure, he turns
back to it, touches it with a mild hand, says "Good
night!" A sob is his only acknowledgment. He might
have had many a worse; perhaps, could have had few better.

Another soft knock at the outer door attracts
his attention as he goes down-stairs. He opens it to Mr.
Jasper, holding in his hand the pupil's hat.

"We have had an awful scene with
him," says Jasper, in a low voice.

"Has it been so bad as that?"

"Murderous!"

Mr. Crisparkle remonstrates: "No, no,
no. Do not use such strong words."

"He might have laid my dear boy dead at
my feet. It is no fault of his, that he did not. But that
I was, through the mercy of God, swift and strong with him,
he would have cut him down on my hearth."

The phrase smites home. "Ah!"
thinks Mr. Crisparkle, "his own words!"

"Seeing what I have seen to-night, and
hearing what I have heard," adds Jasper, with great
earnestness, "I shall never know peace of mind when
there is danger of those two coming together, with no one
else to interfere. It was horrible. There is something of
the tiger in his dark blood."

"You need have no fear for me,
Jasper," returns Mr. Crisparkle, with a quiet smile.
"I have none for myself."

"I have none for myself," returns
Jasper, with an emphasis on the last pronoun, "because
I am not, nor am I in the way of being, the object of his
hostility. But you may be, and my dear boy has been. Good
night!"

Mr. Crisparkle goes in, with the hat that has
so easily, so almost imperceptibly, acquired the right to be
hung up in his hall; hangs it up; and goes thoughtfully to
bed.

ROSA, having no relation that she knew of in the world,
had, from the seventh year of her age, known no home but the
Nuns' House, and no mother, but Miss Twinkleton. Her
remembrance of her own mother was of a pretty little
creature like herself (not much older than herself it seemed
to her), who had been brought home in her father's arms,
drowned. The fatal accident had happened at a party of
pleasure. Every fold and colour in the pretty summer dress,
and even the long wet hair, with scattered petals of ruined
flowers still clinging to it, as the dead young figure, in
its sad, sad beauty lay upon the bed, were fixed indelibly
in Rosa's recollection. So were the wild despair and the
subsequent bowed-down grief of her poor young father, who
died broken-hearted on the first anniversary of that hard
day.

The betrothal of Rosa grew out of the
soothing of his year of mental distress by his fast friend
and old college companion, Drood: who likewise had been left
a widower in his youth. But he, too, went the silent road
into which all earthly pilgrimages merge, some sooner, and
some later; and thus the young couple had come to be as they
were.

The atmosphere of pity surrounding the little
orphan girl when she first came to Cloisterham, had never
cleared away. It had taken brighter hues as she grew older,
happier, prettier; now it had been golden, now roseate, and
now azure; but it had always adorned her with some soft
light of its own. The general desire to console and caress
her, had caused her to be treated in the beginning as a
child much younger than her years; the same desire had
caused her to be still petted when she was a child no
longer. Who should be her favourite, who should anticipate
this or that small present, or do her this or that small
service; who should take her home for the holidays; who
should write to her the oftenest when they were separated,
and whom she would most rejoice to see again when they were
reunited; even these gentle rivalries were not without their
slight dashes of bitterness in the Nuns' House. Well for
the poor Nuns in their day, if they hid no harder strife
under their veils and rosaries!

Thus Rosa had grown to be an amiable, giddy,
wilful, winning little creature; spoilt, in the sense of
counting upon kindness from all around her; but not in the
sense of repaying it with indifference. Possessing an
exhaustless well of affection in her nature, its sparkling
waters had freshened and brightened the Nuns' House for
years, and yet its depths had never yet been moved: what
might betide when that came to pass; what developing changes
might fall upon the heedless head, and light heart, then;
remained to be seen.

By what means the news that there had been a
quarrel between the two young men overnight, involving even
some kind of onslaught by Mr. Neville upon Edwin Drood, got
into Miss Twinkleton's establishment before breakfast, it is
impossible to say. Whether it was brought in by the birds
of the air, or came blowing in with the very air itself,
when the casement windows were set open; whether the baker
brought it kneaded into the bread, or the milkman delivered
it as part of the adulteration of his milk; or the
housemaids, beating the dust out of their mats against the
gateposts, received it in exchange deposited on the mats by
the town atmosphere; certain it is that the news permeated
every gable of the old building before Miss Twinkleton was
down, and that Miss Twinkleton herself received it through
Mrs. Tisher, while yet in the act of dressing; or (as she
might have expressed the phrase to a parent or guardian of a
mythological turn) of sacrificing to the Graces.

Miss Landless's brother had thrown a bottle
at Mr. Edwin Drood.

Miss Landless's brother had thrown a knife at
Mr. Edwin Drood.

A knife became suggestive of a fork; and Miss
Landless's brother had thrown a fork at Mr. Edwin Drood.

As in the governing precedence of Peter
Piper, alleged to have picked the peck of pickled pepper, it
was held physically desirable to have evidence of the
existence of the peck of pickled pepper which Peter Piper
was alleged to have picked; so, in this case, it was held
psychologically important to know why Miss Landless's
brother threw a bottle, knife, or fork -- or bottle, knife,
and fork --- for the cook had been given to
understand it was all three
--- at Mr. Edwin Drood?

Well, then. Miss Landless's brother had said
he admired Miss Bud. Mr. Edwin Drood had said to Miss
Landless's brother that he had no business to admire Miss
Bud. Miss Landless's brother had then "up'd"
(this was the cook's exact information) with the bottle,
knife, fork, and decanter (the decanter now coolly flying at
everybody's head, without the least introduction), and
thrown them all at Mr. Edwin Drood.

Poor little Rosa put a forefinger into each
of her ears when these rumours began to circulate, and
retired into a corner, beseeching not to be told any more;
but Miss Landless, begging permission of Miss Twinkleton to
go and speak with her brother, and pretty plainly showing
that she would take it if it were not given, struck out the
more definite course of going to Mr. Crisparkle's for
accurate intelligence.

When she came back (being first closeted with
Miss Twinkleton, in order that anything objectionable in her
tidings might be retained by that discreet filter), she
imparted to Rosa only, what had taken place; dwelling with a
flushed cheek on the provocation her brother had received,
but almost limiting it to that last gross affront as
crowning "some other words between them," and, out
of consideration for her new friend, passing lightly over
the fact that the other words had originated in her lover's
taking things in general so very easily. To Rosa direct,
she brought a petition from her brother that she would
forgive him; and, having delivered it with sisterly
earnestness, made an end of the subject.

It was reserved for Miss Twinkleton to tone
down the public mind of the Nuns' House. That lady,
therefore, entering in a stately manner what plebeians might
have called the school-room, but what, in the patrician
language of the head of the Nuns' House, was euphuistically,
not to say round-aboutedly, denominated "the apartment
allotted to study," and saying with a forensic air,
"Ladies!" all rose. Mrs. Tisher at the same time
grouped herself behind her chief, as representing Queen
Elizabeth's first historical female friend at Tilbury fort.
Miss Twinkleton then proceeded to remark that Rumour,
Ladies, had been represented by the bard of Avon ---
needless were it to mention the immortal SHAKESPEARE, also
called the Swan of his native river, not improbably with
some reference to the ancient superstition that that bird of
graceful plumage (Miss Jennings will please stand upright)
sang sweetly on the approach of death, for which we have no
ornithological authority, --- Rumour, Ladies, had been
represented by that bard --- hem! ---

"who drew
The celebrated Jew,"

as painted full of tongues. Rumour in Cloisterham (Miss
Ferdinand will honour me with her attention) was no
exception to the great limner's portrait of Rumour
elsewhere. A slight fracas between two young
gentlemen occurring last night within a hundred miles of
these peaceful walls (Miss Ferdinand, being apparently
incorrigible, will have the kindness to write out this
evening, in the original language, the first four fables of
our vivacious neighbour, Monsieur La Fontaine) had been very
grossly exaggerated by Rumour's voice. In the first alarm
and anxiety arising from our sympathy with a sweet young
friend, not wholly to be dissociated from one of the
gladiators in the bloodless arena in question (the
impropriety of Miss Reynolds's appearing to stab herself in
the hand with a pin, is far too obvious, and too glaringly
unlady-like, to be pointed out), we descended from our
maiden elevation to discuss this uncongenial and this unfit
theme. Responsible inquiries having assured us that it was
but one of those "airy nothings" pointed at by the
Poet (whose name and date of birth Miss Giggles will supply
within half an hour), we would now discard the subject, and
concentrate our minds upon the grateful labours of the day.
But the subject so survived all day, nevertheless, that Miss
Ferdinand got into new trouble by surreptitiously clapping
on a paper moustache at dinner-time, and going through the
motions of aiming a water-bottle at Miss Giggles, who drew a
table-spoon in defence.

Now, Rosa thought of this unlucky quarrel a
great deal, and thought of it with an uncomfortable feeling
that she was involved in it, as cause, or consequence, or
what not, through being in a false position altogether as to
her marriage engagement. Never free from such uneasiness
when she was with her affianced husband, it was not likely
that she would be free from it when they were apart.
To-day, too, she was cast in upon herself, and deprived of
the relief of talking freely with her new friend, because
the quarrel had been with Helena's brother, and Helena
undisguisedly avoided the subject as a delicate and
difficult one to herself. At this critical time, of all
times, Rosa's guardian was announced as having come to see
her.

Mr. Grewgious had been well selected for his
trust, as a man of incorruptible integrity, but certainly
for no other appropriate quality discernible on the surface.
He was an arid, sandy man, who, if he had been put into a
grinding-mill, looked as if he would have ground immediately
into high-dried snuff. He had a scanty flat crop of hair,
in colour and consistency like some very mangy yellow fur
tippet; it was so unlike hair, that it must have been a wig,
but for the stupendous improbability of anybody's
voluntarily sporting such a head. The little play of
feature that his face presented, was cut deep into it, in a
few hard curves that made it more like work; and he had
certain notches in his forehead, which looked as though
Nature had been about to touch them into sensibility or
refinement, when she had impatiently thrown away the chisel,
and said: "I really cannot be worried to finish off
this man; let him go as he is."

With too great length of throat at his upper
end, and too much ankle-bone and heel at his Iower; with an
awkward and hesitating manner; with a shambling walk; and
with what is called a near sight --- which perhaps prevented
his observing how much white cotton stocking he displayed to
the public eye, in contrast with his black suit --- Mr.
Grewgious still had some strange capacity in him of making
on the whole an agreeable impression.

Mr. Grewgious was discovered by his ward,
much discomfited by being in Miss Twinkleton's company in
Miss Twinkleton's own sacred room. Dim forebodings of being
examined in something, and not coming well out of it, seemed
to oppress the poor gentleman when found in these
circumstances.

"My dear, how do you do? I am glad to
see you. My dear, how much improved you are. Permit me to
hand you a chair, my dear."

Miss Twinkleton rose at her little
writing-table, saying, with general sweetness, as to the
polite Universe: "Will you permit me to retire?"

"By no means, madam, on my account. I
beg that you will not move."

"I must entreat permission to
move," returned Miss Twinkleton, repeating the
word with a charming grace; "but I will not withdraw,
since you are so obliging. If I wheel my desk to this
corner window, shall I be in the way?"

"Madam! In the way!"

"You are very kind. --- Rosa, my dear,
you will be under no restraint, I am sure."

Here Mr. Grewgious, left by the fire with
Rosa, said again: "My dear, how do you do? I am glad
to see you, my dear." And having waited for her to sit
down, sat down himself.

"My visits," said Mr. Grewgious,
"are, like those of the angels --- not that I compare
myself to an angel."

"No sir," said Rosa.

"Not by any means," assented Mr.
Grewgious. "I merely refer to my visits, which are few
and far between. The angels are, we know very well,
up-stairs."

Miss Twinkleton looked round with a kind of
stiff stare.

"I refer, my dear," said Mr.
Grewgious, laying his hand on Rosa's, as the possibility
thrilled through his frame of his otherwise seeming to take
the awful liberty of calling Miss Twinkleton my dear;
"I refer to the other young ladies."

Miss Twinkleton resumed her writing.

Mr. Grewgious, with a sense of not having
managed his opening point quite as neatly as he might have
desired, smoothed his head from back to front as if he had
just dived, and were pressing the water out --- this
smoothing action, however superfluous, was habitual with him
--- and took a pocket-book from his coat-pocket, and a stump
of black-lead pencil from his waistcoat-pocket.

"I made," he said, turning the
leaves: "I made a guiding memorandum or so --- as I
usually do, for I have no conversational powers whatever ---
to which I will, with your permission, my dear, refer.
'Well and happy.' Truly. You are well and happy, my dear?
You look so."

"Yes, indeed, sir," answered Rosa.

"For which," said Mr. Grewgious,
with a bend of his head towards the corner window, "our
warmest acknowledgements are due, and I am sure are
rendered, to the maternal kindness and the constant care and
consideration of the lady whom I have now the honour to see
before me."

This point, again, made but a lame departure
from Mr. Grewgious, and never got to its destination; for,
Miss Twinkleton, feeling that the courtesies required her to
be by this time quite outside the conversation, was biting
the end of her pen, and looking upward, as waiting for the
descent of an idea from any member of the Celestial Nine who
might have one to spare.

Mr. Grewgious smoothed his smooth head again,
and then made another reference to his pocket-book; lining
out "well and happy," as disposed of.

"'Pounds, shillings, and pence,' is my
next note. A dry subject for a young lady, but an important
subject too. Life is pounds, shillings, and pence. Death
is ---" A sudden recollection of the death of her two
parents seemed to stop him, and he said in a softer tone,
and evidently inserting the negative as an after-thought:
"Death is not pounds, shillings, and pence."

His voice was as hard and dry as himself, and
Fancy might have ground it straight, like himself, into
high-dried snuff. And yet, through the very limited means
of expression that he possessed, he seemed to express
kindness. If Nature had but finished him off, kindness
might have been recognisable in his face at this moment.
But if the notches in his forehead wouldn't fuse together,
and if his face would work and couldn't play, what could he
do, poor man!

Rosa laughed at the idea of being in debt.
It seemed, to her inexperience, a comical vagary of the
imagination. Mr. Grewgious stretched his near sight to be
sure that this was her view of the case. "Ah!" he
said, as comment, with a furtive glance towards Miss
Twinkleton, and lining out pounds, shillings, and pence:
"I spoke of having got among the angels! So I
did!"

Rosa felt what his next memorandum would
prove to be, and was blushing and folding a crease in her
dress with one embarrassed hand, long before he found it.

"'Marriage.' Hem!" Mr. Grewgious
carried his smoothing hand down over his eyes and nose, and
even chin, before drawing his chair a little nearer, and
speaking a little more confidentially: "I now touch, my
dear, upon the point that is the direct cause of my
troubling you with the present visit. Otherwise, being a
particularly Angular man, I should not have intruded here.
I am the last man to intrude into a sphere for which I am so
entirely unfitted. I feel, on these premises, as if I was a
bear --- with the cramp --- in a youthful Cotillon."

His ungainliness gave him enough of the air
of his simile to set Rosa off laughing heartily.

"It strikes you in the same light,"
said Mr. Grewgious, with perfect calmness. "Just so.
To return to my memorandum. Mr. Edwin has been to and fro
here, as was arranged. You have mentioned that, in your
quarterly letters to me. And you like him, and he likes
you."

"I like him very much,
sir," rejoined Rosa.

"So I said, my dear," returned her
guardian, for whose ear the timid emphasis was much too
fine. "Good. And you correspond."

"We write to one another," said
Rosa, pouting, as she recalled their epistolary differences.

"Such is the meaning that I attach to
the word 'correspond' in this application, my dear,"
said Mr. Grewgious. "Good. All goes well, time works
on, and at this next Christmas-time it will become
necessary, as a matter of form, to give the exemplary lady
in the corner window, to whom we are so much indebted,
business notice of your departure in the ensuing half-year.
Your relations with her are far more than business
relations, no doubt; but a residue of business remains in
them, and business is business ever. I am a particularly
Angular man," proceeded Mr. Grewgious, as if it
suddenly occurred to him to mention it, "and I am not
used to give anything away. If, for these two reasons, some
competent Proxy would give you away, I should take it very
kindly."

Rosa intimated, with her eyes on the ground,
that she thought a substitute might be found, if required.

"Surely, surely," said Mr.
Grewgious. "For instance, the gentleman who teaches
Dancing here --- he would know how to do it with graceful
propriety. He would advance and retire in a manner
satisfactory to the feelings of the officiating clergyman,
and of yourself, and the bridegroom, and all parties
concerned. I am --- I am a particularly Angular man,"
said Mr. Grewgious, as if he had made up his mind to screw
it out at last: "and should only blunder."

Rosa sat still and silent. Perhaps her mind
had not got quite so far as the ceremony yet, but was
lagging on the way there.

"Memorandum, 'Will.' Now, my
dear," said Mr. Grewgious, referring to his notes,
disposing of "Marriage" with his pencil, and
taking a paper from his pocket; "although I have before
possessed you with the contents of your father's will, I
think it right at this time to leave a certified copy of it
in your hands. And although Mr. Edwin is also aware of its
contents, I think it right at this time likewise to place a
certified copy of it in Mr. Jasper's hand ---"

"Not in his own!" asked Rosa,
looking up quickly. "Cannot the copy go to Eddy
himself?"

"Why, yes, my dear, if you particularly
wish it; but I spoke of Mr. Jasper as being his
trustee."

"I do particularly wish it, if you
please," said Rosa, hurriedly and earnestly; "I
don't like Mr. Jasper to come between us, in any way."

"It is natural, I suppose," said
Mr. Grewgious, "that your young husband should be all
in all. Yes. You observe that I say, I suppose. The fact
is, I am a particularly Unnatural man, and I don't know from
my own knowledge."

Rosa looked at him with some wonder.

"I mean," he explained, "that
young ways were never my ways. I was the only offspring of
parents far advanced in life, and I half believe I was born
advanced in life myself. No personality is intended towards
the name you will so soon change, when I remark that while
the general growth of people seem to have come into
existence, buds, I seem to have come into existence a chip.
I was a chip --- and a very dry one --- when I first became
aware of myself. Respecting the other certified copy, your
wish shall be complied with. Respecting your inheritance, I
think you know all. It is an annuity of two hundred and
fifty pounds. The savings upon that annuity, and some other
items to your credit, all duly carried to account, with
vouchers, will place you in possession of a lump-sum of
money, rather exceeding Seventeen Hundred Pounds. I am
empowered to advance the cost of your preparations for your
marriage out of that fund. All is told."

"Will you please tell me," said
Rosa, taking the paper with a prettily knitted brow, but not
opening it: "whether I am right in what I am going to
say? I can understand what you tell me, so very much better
than what I read in law-writings. My poor papa and Eddy's
father made their agreement together, as very dear and firm
and fast friends, in order that we, too, might be very dear
and firm and fast friends after them?"

"Just so."

"For the lasting good of both of us, and
the lasting happiness of both of us?"

"Just so."

"That we might be to one another even
much more than they had been to one another?"

"Just so."

"It was not bound upon Eddy, and it was
not bound upon me, by any forfeit, in case ---"

"Don't be agitated, my dear. In the
case that it brings tears into your affectionate eyes even
to picture to yourself --- in the case of your not marrying
one another --- no, no forfeiture on either side. You would
then have been my ward until you were of age. No worse
would have befallen you. Bad enough perhaps!"

"And Eddy?"

"He would have come into his partnership
derived from his father, and into its arrears to his credit
(if any), on attaining his majority, just as now."

Rosa, with her perplexed face and knitted
brow, bit the corner of her attested copy, as she sat with
her head on one side, looking abstractedly on the floor, and
smoothing it with her foot.

"In short," said Mr. Grewgious,
"this betrothal is a wish, a sentiment, a friendly
project, tenderly expressed on both sides. That it was
strongly felt, and that there was a lively hope that it
would prosper, there can be no doubt. When you were both
children, you began to be accustomed to it, and it
has prospered. But circumstances alter cases; and
I made this visit to-day, partly, indeed principally, to
discharge myself of the duty of telling you, my dear, that
two young people can only be betrothed in marriage (except
as a matter of convenience, and therefore mockery and
misery) of their own free will, their own attachment, and
their own assurance (it may or it may not prove a mistaken
one, but we must take our chance of that), that they are
suited to each other, and will make each other happy. Is it
to be supposed, for example, that if either of your fathers
were living now, and had any mistrust on that subject, his
mind would not be changed by the change of circumstances
involved in the change of your years? Untenable,
unreasonable, inconclusive, and preposterous!"

Mr. Grewgious said all this, as if he were
reading it aloud; or, still more, as if he were repeating a
lesson. So expressionless of any approach to spontaneity
were his face and manner.

"I have now, my dear," he added,
blurring out "Will" with his pencil,
"discharged myself of what is doubtless a formal duty
in this case, but still a duty in such a case. Memorandum,
'Wishes.' My dear, is there any wish of yours that I can
further?"

Rosa shook her head, with an almost plaintive
air of hesitation in want of help.

"Is there any instruction that I can
take from you with reference to your affairs?"

"I --- I should like to settle them with
Eddy first, if you please," said Rosa, plaiting the
crease in her dress.

"Surely, surely," returned Mr.
Grewgious. "You two should be of one mind in all
things. Is the young gentleman expected shortly?"

"He has gone away only this morning. He
will be back at Christmas."

"Nothing could happen better. You will,
on his return at Christmas, arrange all matters of detail
with him; you will then communicate with me; and I will
discharge myself (as a mere business acquaintance) of my
business responsibilities towards the accomplished lady in
the corner window. They will accrue at that season."
Blurring pencil once again. "Memorandum, 'Leave.'
Yes. I will now, my dear, take my leave."

"Could I," said Rosa, rising, as he
jerked out of his chair in his ungainly way: "could I
ask you, most kindly to come to me at Christmas, if I had
anything particular to say to you?"

"Why, certainly, certainly," he
rejoined; apparently --- if such a word can be used of one
who had no apparent lights or shadows about him ---
complimented by the question. "As a particularly
Angular man, I do not fit smoothly into the social circle,
and consequently I have no other engagement at
Christmas-time than to partake, on the twenty-fifth, of a
boiled turkey and celery sauce with a --- with a
particularly Angular clerk I have the good fortune to
possess, whose father, being a Norfolk farmer, sends him up
(the turkey up), as a present to me, from the neighbourhood
of Norwich. I should be quite proud of your wishing to see
me, my dear. As a professional Receiver of rents, so very
few people do wish to see me, that the novelty
would be bracing."

For his ready acquiescence, the grateful Rosa
put her hands upon his shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and
instantly kissed him.

"Lord bless me!" cried Mr.
Grewgious. "Thank you, my dear! The honour is almost
equal to the pleasure. Miss Twinkleton, madam, I have had a
most satisfactory conversation with my ward, and I will now
release you from the incumbrance of my presence."

"Nay, sir," rejoined Miss
Twinkleton, rising with a gracious condescension: "say
not incumbrance. Not so, by any means. I cannot permit you
to say so."

"Thank you, madam. I have read in the
newspapers," said Mr. Grewgious, stammering a little,
"that when a distinguished visitor (not that I am one:
far from it) goes to a school (not that this is one: far
from it), he asks for a holiday, or some sort of grace. It
being now the afternoon in the --- College --- of which you
are the eminent head, the young ladies might gain nothing,
except in name, by having the rest of the day allowed them.
But if there is any young lady at all under a cloud, might I
solicit ---"

"Ah, Mr. Grewgious, Mr. Grewgious!"
cried Miss Twinkleton, with a chastely-rallying forefinger.
"O you gentlemen, you gentlemen! Fie for shame, that
you are so hard upon us poor maligned disciplinarians of our
sex, for your sakes! But as Miss Ferdinand is at present
weighed down by an incubus" --- Miss Twinkleton might
have said a pen-and-ink-ubus of writing out Monsieur La
Fontaine --- "go to her, Rosa my dear, and tell her the
penalty is remitted, in deference to the intercession of
your guardian, Mr. Grewgious."

Miss Twinkleton here achieved a curtsey,
suggestive of marvels happening to her respected legs, and
which she came out of nobly, three yards behind her
starting-point.

As he held it incumbent upon him to call on
Mr. Jasper before leaving Cloisterham, Mr. Grewgious went to
the gatehouse, and climbed its postern stair. But Mr.
Jasper's door being closed, and presenting on a slip of
paper the word "Cathedral," the fact of its being
service-time was borne into the mind of Mr. Grewgious. So
he descended the stair again, and crossing the Close, paused
at the great western folding-door of the Cathedral, which
stood open on the fine and bright, though short-lived,
afternoon, for the airing of the place.

"Dear me," said Mr. Grewgious,
peeping in, "it's like looking down the throat of Old
Time."

Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb and
arch and vault; and gloomy shadows began to deepen in
corners; and damps began to rise from green patches of
stone; and jewels, cast upon the pavement of the nave from
stained glass by the declining sun, began to perish. Within
the grill-gate of the chancel, up the steps surmounted
loomingly by the fast-darkening organ, white robes could be
dimly seen, and one feeble voice, rising and falling in a
cracked, monotonous mutter, could at intervals be faintly
heard. In the free outer air, the river, the green
pastures, and the brown arable lands, the teeming hills and
dales, were reddened by the sunset: while the distant little
windows in windmills and farm homesteads, shone, patches of
bright beaten gold. In the Cathedral, all became gray,
murky, and sepulchral, and the cracked monotonous mutter
went on like a dying voice, until the organ and the choir
burst forth, and drowned it in a sea of music. Then, the
sea fell, and the dying voice made another feeble effort,
and then the sea rose high, and beat its life out, and
lashed the roof, and surged among the arches, and pierced
the heights of the great tower; and then the sea was dry,
and all was still.

Mr. Grewgious had by that time walked to the
chancel-steps, where he met the living waters coming out.

"Nothing is the matter?" Thus
Jasper accosted him, rather quickly. "You have not
been sent for?"

"Not at all, not at all. I came down of
my own accord. I have been to my pretty ward's, and am now
homeward bound again."

"You found her thriving?"

"Blooming indeed. Most blooming. I
merely came to tell her, seriously, what a betrothal by
deceased parents is."

"And what is it --- according to your
judgment?"

Mr. Grewgious noticed the whiteness of the
lips that asked the question, and put it down to the
chilling account of the Cathedral.

"I merely came to tell her that it could
not be considered binding, against any such reason for its
dissolution as a want of affection, or want of disposition
to carry it into effect, on the side of either party."

"May I ask, had you any especial reason
for telling her that?"

Mr. Grewgious answered somewhat sharply:
"The especial reason of doing my duty, sir. Simply
that." Then he added: "Come, Mr. Jasper; I know
your affection for your nephew, and that you are quick to
feel on his behalf. I assure you that this implies not the
least doubt of, or disrespect to, your nephew."

"You could not," returned Jasper,
with a friendly pressure of his arm, as they walked on side
by side, "speak more handsomely."

Mr. Grewgious pulled off his hat to smooth
his head, and, having smoothed it, nodded it contentedly,
and put his hat on again.

"I will wager," said Jasper,
smiling --- his lips were still so white that he was
conscious of it, and bit and moistened them while speaking:
"I will wager that she hinted no wish to be released
from Ned."

"And you will win your wager, if you
do," retorted Mr. Grewgious. "We should allow
some margin for little maidenly delicacies in a young
motherless creature, under such circumstances, I suppose; it
is not in my line; what do you think?"

"There can be no doubt of it."

"I am glad you say so. Because,"
proceeded Mr. Grewgious, who had all this time very
knowingly felt his way round to action on his remembrance of
what she had said of Jasper himself: "because she seems
to have some little delicate instinct that all preliminary
arrangements had best be made between Mr. Edwin Drood and
herself, don't you see? She don't want us, don't you
know?"

Jasper touched himself on the breast, and
said, somewhat indistinctly: "You mean me."

Mr. Grewgious touched himself on the breast,
and said: "I mean us. Therefore, let them have their
little discussions and councils together, when Mr. Edwin
Drood comes back here at Christmas; and then you and I will
step in, and put the final touches to the business."

"So, you settled with her that you would
come back at Christmas?" observed Jasper. "I see!
Mr. Grewgious, as you quite fairly said just now, there is
such an exceptional attachment between my nephew and me,
that I am more sensitive for the dear, fortunate, happy,
happy fellow than for myself. But it is only right that the
young lady should be considered, as you have pointed out,
and that I should accept my cue from you. I accept it. I
understand that at Christmas they will complete their
preparations for May, and that their marriage will be put in
final train by themselves, and that nothing will remain for
us but to put ourselves in train also, and have everything
ready for our formal release from our trusts, on Edwin's
birthday."